Streets Of Death!

Stick to the neighborhood greenway—or else.

ON BROADWAY: Portland’s designated bike routes have received many safety upgrades in recent years, but the city doesn’t measure ridership on some busy unofficial routes. - IMAGE: James Rexroad

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The Portland Bureau of Transportation
says the city is getting safer to bike in: Portland’s bicycle traffic
increased 190 percent between 2000 and 2009, and accidents declined 39
percent, the bureau adds. But while the city as a whole is safer, many
of its most dangerous streets are as scary as ever.

A large number of
bicycle-car collisions have dotted Northeast Broadway from 15th Avenue
to the Broadway Bridge. All told, the mile-long stretch of asphalt was
the scene of 61 reported accidents involving bicycles from 2000 to 2009,
according to PBOT data. One of the more hazardous intersections in the
corridor is the interchange where Northeast Broadway meets Interstate 5.
At this junction, cars eager to hit the highway will occasionally hit
riders instead (10 since 2000).

Well-traveled
routes, like the one leading to the Broadway Bridge (which is traveled
by an average of 5,291 cyclists a day) or those leading to the Hawthorne
Bridge (over 7,000 trips a day), tend to have more total accidents than
less popular routes, but the rate of accidents per trip is actually
pretty low—approximately one per 225,000 trips for this section of
Broadway. Due to heavy use, these routes also tend to garner city funds
for projects like green bike lanes, bike boxes and, on the Broadway
Bridge, bicycle signals. The same cannot be said for Portland roads less
frequented by bicyclists.

The stretch of
Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard from Broadway to
Killingsworth Street is not especially popular among bikers, and for
good reason: It lacks a bike lane. Yet the street had 36 reported bike
accidents, one of them fatal, from 2000 to 2009.

“It’s
a no-man’s land for bikes,” says Jonathan Maus, publisher of
BikePortland.org. Maus says almost no one rides on the street, a fact
the Transportation Bureau couldn’t confirm—it doesn’t collect ridership
numbers on streets that are not part of designated bike routes. This
means the city could have several trouble spots where bicycle traffic is
high but uncounted and where accidents continue to happen. According to
the bureau, this section of MLK won’t get a bike lane. Why?

“I think for a lot of
people,” says PBOT’s Mark Lear, “they just look at the intersections
where you have the most crashes and then say, ‘Well, spend money
there.’” Lear, a safety expert for the bureau, says streets with a lot
of crashes tend to be high-volume streets with swift-moving traffic.
Instead of spending money on these roads, Lear says, it’s better to get
bicyclists off these fast streets and onto slower ones.

PBOT
hopes to do this by spending money on low-volume streets and
greenways—such as the Going Greenway in Northeast Portland (see next
page)—in an effort to encourage bicyclists to stay off busy city roads.
Maus disagrees with this approach.

“I don’t think we
should have streets that are that inaccessible to bicycles,” he says.
“Yes, you can go on them. And yes, you can take up that lane. But how
many people have the tolerance to do that?”

Crash data shows many
Portlanders do have a tolerance for dangerous roads, suggesting the
possibility that a number of streets are being used as unofficial
bicycle routes. For instance, Oregon Department of Transportation
collision reports for Northeast Ainsworth Street from Concordia
University to Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus show riders
are using this section of road as a de facto east-west corridor. Riders
using this route have also reported, on BikePortland.org, eight “close
calls” and four “problem spots” on the street. How many riders are using
the street is unknown, but a quick look at the map shows why riders
might want to use this route versus the more circuitous path PBOT has
designed for them. It’s simply more convenient.

Maus
says Portland will never meet all its bike-friendly goals unless
cycling is made more convenient, and this, he says, means adding bike
lanes on the city’s busy thoroughfares. This probably will not happen.

“If you want to make
MLK safe for bikes,” says Lear, “you need something like a cycle track
[a bicycle-only path], and you can do miles and miles of neighborhood
greenway routes for the cost of one mile of cycle track on MLK.”

How
safe are Portland’s streets for bicycles? If you stick to side streets,
greenways and streets with developed infrastructure, like the routes
over the central bridges, you’re probably going to be just fine. But
don’t expect to ride the shortest distance between points A and B. And
if you do ride on those busy streets without bike lanes, remember that
as far as the city is concerned, your trip only counts if you crash.

HOW YOU WILL BE INJURED

Credits: Corey Thompson

It will happen in winter—December or
January—on a clear, dry day. You will be riding on a residential street
with no bike infrastructure. The culprit will probably be not a car but
poor road conditions—gravel or a steel plate or a storm drain. You will
tear your skin, and probably hurt your arms or legs, but not so badly as
to require a hospital stay.

A 2008 study by Oregon Health and Science University of 962 bike commuters, published in the November 2010 issue of Trauma,
found that injuries are distressingly common among regular riders in
Portland: Nearly 20 percent of the participants in the yearlong study,
regardless of age, sex or commuting experience, received some sort of
injury. Put another way, riders can expect a traumatic accident every
6,670 miles.

The great majority of
injuries were to skin or limbs, and less than one-third of the reported
accidents involved a car (although half of the “serious traumatic
events” did involve a motor vehicle). The rate of accidents more than
doubled in December and January, and the great majority of accidents
happened on residential streets or in bike lanes. The study does contain
some good news, though, confirming once again that riders who wear
helmets are less likely to be seriously injured. BEN WATERHOUSE.